From discovering polar cyclones on Uranus to turning on the gravitational wave detector LIGO, this week has been full of new discoveries and findings. Read about the most recent news from the field of science here.
Astronomers find new clue about mysterious radio flashes in space
Since its discoveries, fleeting flurries of radio waves called fast radio bursts (FRBs) reaching Earth from faraway galaxies have been puzzling scientists. Now, scientists are trying to figure out what produces an FRB by studying its local environment to determine the sources that could exist in, or create, such environments. They targeted a repeating FRB, called FRB 20190520B, using telescopes in the U.S. and Australia. They discovered that the FRB’s Faraday rotation measure – an indicator of its magnetic field strength – was highly variable and that it reversed direction twice. This magnetic reversal, they believe, has to do with the FRB source orbiting a binary star system where the companion star is probably a massive star or a black hole.
